The smell of smoke lingers long after a fire is out

There are cracks so deep in Weaver’s Field
the farmer can push his arm in up to
his elbow. Even in the keepered woods,

laurel has wilted. Gnarly field maples
are almost leafless. Skeins of black smoke drift
from the field fires at Enham Alamein.

him coming home from work
in damp, sooty uniform,
and the alarm bell that rang
in my childhood home
whenever he was needed

Towering piles of cumulus sail north
like galleons. When it comes, it darkens
the down to an unfamiliar moorland brown.

With it the strong scent of ammonia
from sheep’s urine. Reanimated,
mingled with damp dust and baked grass.

From The rain has come, and suddenly the land looks (and smells) different.

Synecdoche, New York

the most ridiculous thing about living
is that childhood is its own eternity
and then suddenly you’re an adult. time
moves faster and faster and life is
sectioned off into sleeping eating working
blinking repeating. i forget what day
of the week it is. i can go into
a store and buy whatever they’ll let me
and whatever i have the money for.
nothing means anything but also
everything means something. i work so hard
and get paid almost nothing. i stare in
to space between customers and think of
being somewhere else. i just had a birthday
and i keep forgetting how old i am.
all i do is work and wait around.
all i do is want things i can’t have.
i often wish i was somewhere else,
i wish i was different. i feel trapped,
i don’t like it. for just a split second
in the scope of time i exist, and then
i’ll be gone. am i lucky to be here,
or am i cursed? why is living so hard?
more and more i think about the people
in my life i love and never see, never
make the time for. it brings me pain. i sit
and want and plan and don’t act and time keeps
moving. wasted minutes, years. the last
decade, vanished, gone forever. my youth
slipped through my fingers. i try my best not
to let it pull me down. i need to try
and live in the moment. i need to change
my life, it’s not going to change on its own.
i need to stop crying over this movie,
it ended over an hour ago.

From Lucy’s review of Synecdoche, New York – Letterboxd, 2019.

To kiss you

I would like to
see from your eyes,
hear from your ears,
feel with your skin,
and kiss with your mouth.

I would like to
be the shadow that is born
from the soles of your feet
and that lengthens along the ground
upon which you walk.

I want to
be the water that bathes you,
the light that gives you form,
I wish that my substance
were your substance,
that your voice should come
out of my throat
so as to caress me from inside.

Frida Kahlo’s letter to Josep Bartolí, 20 October 1946.

43-Man Squamish

Penalties are applied for infractions
such as walling the Pritz,
icing on fifth snivel,
running with the mob,
rushing the season,
inability to face facts,
or sending the Dummy home early.

The game officials are a Probate Judge
dressed as a British judge, with wig,
a Field Representative
in a Scottish kilt,
a Head Cockswain
in long overcoat,
and a Baggage Smasher
dressed as a male beachgoer
in pre–World War I years.

Competitors wear gloves,
a helmet, and flippers.
They pursue the Pritz,
constructed from untreated ibex hide,
stuffed with blue jay feathers.

Play begins after a frullip
is touched to the flutney
and the recitation
Mi tío es enfermo,
pero la carretera es verde!

Most squamish games consist of seven Ogres,
unless of course, it rains.

From the rules for 43-man Squamish, conceived by Mad Magazine in 1965.

Hedgehogs foreknowledge of the wind

Trees buried in Winter;
World a Looking-Glass and Book.
Desire of gathering Riches has no Limits –
Life, many Ways to get rid of it.

Pleasures wheedle and caress
only to strangle us –
Kings and Coblers Souls
cast in the same Mold.

Books, immortal Children –
Counsel’s Strength consists in Time.
Word of Men, their only Tye on one another,
Dying for Fear of Death.

Entries in the index of Charles Cotton’s translation of Montaigne’s essays, 1685.

Outlined

Toward the Atlantic Ocean, Africa

The front of the human head cut off
at the shoulders and leaning forward to kiss

Europe, Thrace and the Black Sea regions

a young girl in a long dress

Britain, Scandinavia

who stretches her hand back
to attract a leaping cat.

Earth, the two oceans, the American continent

In the other half of Volva the brightness
is more widely diffused;

South America, Nicaragua, Yucatán, Popayán

you might call it the outline of a bell
hanging from a rope and swinging westward.

What lies above and below
can’t be likened to anything.

Somnium by Johannes Kepler, 1608.

Close enough to greatness

On floated a buzzed Garbo,
a browned-out Garland.
Elvises of every era
groped for their towels.

Here walked a plausible Oprah.
In came an ayatollah. And there,
lanky in her tankini—a Cher.
If the whole idea is to go

out of the world as late
and as happy as possible,
you could do worse
than die on a megaliner.

You would have left knowing
how a crowd surrenders
when a man stands before
them as Frank Sinatra.

From Wish You Were Her, n+1.